North Carolina Republicans Are Still Trying to Suppress Black Voters

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C. handed down a brutal ruling against North Carolina’s voter ID law, noting that state lawmakers intentionally targeted black voters to suppress them.

But they aren’t done.

The director of the North Carolina Republican party is telling county election boards dominated by Republicans to make specific changes that would essentially make up for the ruling against voter ID and suppress black voters.

Woodhouse suggests limiting early voting hours because the sites allow voters to use same-day registration – a practice the voter ID law sought to eliminate.

“We believe same-day registration is ripe with voter fraud, or the opportunity to commit it,” he wrote. “Same-day registration is only available during early voting. We are under no obligation to offer more opportunities for voter fraud.”

To say that you believe in something does not make it true. In this case there’s no truth to the claim at all and these are the exact same arguments the 4th Circuit Court just rebuked. There is no fraud.

Executive director Dallas Woodhouse has also instructed boards to eliminate voting on Sundays, a move that no one will mistake in its true intention.

Sunday early voting hours have been popular among African-Americans, some of whom organize “souls to the polls” events where church members vote together after Sunday services.

Counties aren’t required to open early voting sites on Sundays, and Woodhouse lobbied against it.

Woodhouse was very publicly called out by his own brother this morning after news broke that the state party is still trying to suppress black voters.

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It’s not merely the willingness to lie so obviously and spout any bullshit but what they are defending with their lies and causing to happen with their lies that is so galling.

The definition of patriotism needs to be rethought. It isn’t enough to just love your country in some vague, nebulous way. You have to care enough about your fellow Americans not to deliberately deprive them of the right to participate in Democracy and to get outraged when an entire political party (your political party Republicans) engages in a vast conspiracy to do exactly that.

These people are not patriots.

Username1016

Go, Brad Woodhouse! Call him out on it.

Victor the Crab

North Carolina Republicans need to admit what their real intentions are here. They want to deny “niggers” the right to vote in elections because they’ll vote Democrats, because the GOP are awash in racist filth like Pat McCrory and Dallas Woodhouse.

ninjaf

Not only have they already admitted it, but that was literally their defense in the court case.

muselet

Ashby, you missed the very lowest of low comedy, Dallas Woodhouse’s defense of his advocacy for voter suppression efforts:

“I’m an unabashed partisan, and we have dozens and dozens of Democracy N.C. and NAACP and other people flooding these meetings asking for partisan considerations,” he said. “Our members have a duty, I believe, to act within the law to at least consider the Republican point of view. That’s all we ask them to do.”

According to Dallas Woodhouse, the Republican point of view is that too many legitimate voters have access to the polls. Good of him to admit it.

Some good news got reported in the article, as well:

So far, a number of Republican elections board members have voted for plans that include Sunday hours and college campus polling sites. Some have rejected efforts to significantly reduce the number of early voting hours offered in 2012.

Not every GOPer is an unreconstructed (I know, you see what I did there) racialist like Woodhouse. Of course, it’s kind of sad that is considered good news and not a baseline expectation, but such is the world in which we live.

–alopecia

ninjaf

These assemblymen forget that most North Carolinians are are liberal to moderate. Their day of reckoning is coming and I hope it is a bloodbath for them.

The DOJ needs to mobilize some election observers for the day of in NC. They also need to get emergency injunctions against any such changes by anyone in NC. And good on Brad Woodhouse for standing up to his brother over it.